


What Would Be

by BabylonsFall



Series: What Would Be [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Character Study, Eliot Spencer-centric, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Multi, Pre-Canon, Pre-OT3, all the other characters are here too but it's, temporarily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25990222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabylonsFall/pseuds/BabylonsFall
Summary: The man that would be Eliot Spencer was a soldier. He knew tenuous peace long before he knew relentless war - but the spectre of both always hounded him and his.Or, Eliot's been far too lonely for far too long.
Relationships: Eliot Spencer & Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer & Parker, Eliot Spencer & Sophie Devereaux
Series: What Would Be [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962088
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	What Would Be

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno. I love the Old Guard but only know the movie so far. And the Leverage fandom on tumblr took it and ran. Somewhere along the way this idea popped up and I wanted to write it so here we are.
> 
> Don't look too hard at the timeline and we'll all be happy.
> 
> Quick thank you to [benjaminrussell](https://benjaminrussell.tumblr.com/) for giving this a quick look over.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The man that would be Eliot Spencer was a soldier. He knew tenuous peace long before he knew relentless war - but the spectre of both always hounded him and his.

The first time the man that would be Eliot Spencer dies...the first time, there’s pain. There’s a roar of blood beating in his ears and a rumble of muddy earth being torn apart by hooves and boots and falling bodies echoing the call.

There’s screaming. And Eliot...Eliot’s never been sure if his voice joined them. Or if he was already gone.

He hoped he was.

* * *

Eliot returns, a mere seven years later - after his cities, after his _people_ , have burned, after the empire has continued it’s march into their heart - specifically to take a chunk out of that fucking monument that bastard put up in memory of the battle. His blade made a few scratches, little more, and it wasn’t until he tore at the rock with bare hands and blinding rage that he managed to tear rock from mortar, smearing stone red and black in his wake.

It wasn’t a large piece. In fact, when he’d returned - once, in a pitiful state, a hundred years or more past - he couldn’t say what piece he’d taken, the silent march of time having been a far more effective destructor than his rage would ever be.

* * *

Andromache, Quynh and Lykon find him. Reaching back into his memory, he has no date for it, but he knew them long before he ever laid eyes on them. They haunted his dreams - unfamiliar faces in a sea of familiar battle grounds. Oh, he knew he’d never seen the lands those three had travelled. But he knew the look - there’s only so many ways sunshine can glint off blood and metal and mud.

They find him.

And it’s nice, for a brief moment.

He’s not going crazy.

* * *

He’s there when Lykon dies. But he’s not there holding his hand as this...this thing that has a hold of them finally lets go.

There was a battle to fight.

* * *

He leaves. He leaves, and he doesn’t question Andromache’s look of understanding, Quynh’s soft goodbyes. He knows they’ll be okay - can see it in their smiles, in the necklace around their necks. But he can’t stay. Can’t watch, knowing he’ll eventually have to watch them die too - at the whim of...of whatever this thing was. Can’t watch, knowing he’ll miss it for the blink of an eye that it is.

He still dreams of them, of course. Takes comfort in the brief flashes he gets. They shine bright, always, always, so, so bright. And he’s happy for them. Happy they have each other, and happy he’s allowed this peek into their lives, if only to know they’re still okay. They’re still fighting.

The new faces...the new faces he’s not expecting.

He’s holed up a world away - far as he could get when the rumbles of great wars started thrumming through the earth once more - when he sees the soldiers.

It takes many nights, many, many dreams, to realize he’s watching the same battle from two different sides. Over, and over, and over again.

He almost wants to laugh when his dreams go from blood soaked battles and burning cities to careful quiet moments, away from the bloodshed, away from the frailty of broken battle cries.

Instead, he cries.

* * *

He does laugh, when he sees Andromache and Quynh alongside them. Sees them fight, side by side. They’re beautiful, together in their solitude. He almost wishes he could be there beside them.

Almost.

* * *

Then Quynh dies. And dies. And dies. And _dies._

And that beauty, that wish turns to rage - hot and bright and eating what’s left of him from the inside out.

* * *

It takes decades for Eliot to accept the signs Andromache leaves him. Not because he blames her - he couldn’t, even without the dreams showing her pain and her own rage. His could only hope to burn as bright as hers.

It takes him decades because...he can’t face her. He was gone. He was gone, and another one of them was taken. And it’s not his fault. He knows it’s not his fault. But it bites at his gut all the same.

So, he has to be sure. Be sure her, and the others, are nowhere within a hundred miles.

But, he finds the cave, easily enough. Andromache was anything but subtle.

He finds the cave. Finds the journals. Adds in his own pages, and leaves it there for her to find whenever she makes her way back to this part of the world. He was still around, still alive. Had his own stories to tell. He finally had names for the faces in his dreams - Yusuf and Nicolo.

It makes him feel a part of something, if only from a distance.

* * *

When he meets the Duchess, he’s not looking for her.

Hell, he doesn’t even know _to_ look for her. There’s no dreams. No pull. There’s nothing.

And then she dies. And he’s at the same table as her when she does. He can practically _feel_ her throat closing up around what had to be a nasty poison. He’s the first to her by a miracle alone - and only just manages to direct her and her guards to her chambers. Sometimes it paid well to be a favored guest - and sometimes, apparently, shit like this happened.

He’s there when she comes back - gasping for air with lungs that haven’t quite caught up with the rest of her (and that feeling is one he knows well enough to wince in sympathy for).

It’s a long ass night from there.

* * *

He has a name to give to Andromache, the next time he makes it to their hiding place. It’s not her real name, of course - turns out, the Duchess only got the title out of sheer tenacity and a fair amount of wit and charm, but she was as far from royal as he was - and he’s sure Andromache will get a kick out of the list he’ll eventually give her, but...still. It’s nice to be able to give something back.

* * *

He’s Eliot, by the time the others find Booker. Couldn’t say when he’d decided on the name. When it had stuck, and when it had blended. But, he answered to it readily enough - and far easier than the Duchess ever answered to any of her names.

He’s also in France, by some stroke of luck, when the others find the man. Him and the Duchess stick around long enough to hear Andromache give the man with the haunted eyes a sketch of what his new life is like. Long enough to watch his heart break around the sharp edges he hasn’t even begun to understand.

He meets Yusuf and Nicolo for the first time as well. Takes heart from the fact that the snippets he still gets in dreams are but a shadow of the truth.

They’re gone again before any of them can ask them to stay.

Who would have done the asking is still up for debate.

* * *

Him and the Duchess don’t regularly stick together, so much as they...stay around. Eliot finds a rhythm in his work - taking money to look intimidating without trying too hard, or, occasionally, taking more to find...work arounds, as needed. He’s not picky, and he has little care in hurting men who want to hurt him, and making enough profit to live off.

(Sometimes, he remembers the journals Andromache left him. Where she talked about the good they did - like he couldn’t see it for himself - and feels sick to his stomach.

He’s not like them. And he doesn’t know why.)

The Duchess on the other hand prefers finer things. Finer people. Even if her con is just as underhanded as his.

They meet, occasionally, to talk. To wonder after the others. And then to promise to see each other again before the year is out.

And before they know it, another five, ten, twenty years have passed. But they do find each other in the end. Even if they run in different crowds, it’s nice, sometimes, to have a familiar face that’s not just a dream.

* * *

Before he can blink, it’s the end of the 20th century. And somewhere along the way, not being picky has landed him in a world he can’t recognize, but knows like the beat of his own heart.

He doesn’t meet the Duchess anymore.

Doesn’t go to any of Andromache’s - no, Andy’s. Andy’s now - drops. Hasn’t in...thirty? Years.

Some nights he stares up at the stars. Picks out constellations he learned as a child, recites names he’s not even sure are right anymore, they’ve been so worn down by time. Some nights he stares. And wonders why, in the last 1900 years, this last century has taken everything out of him.

He thinks he sees a similar look in Booker’s eyes - through Andy’s, through Joe’s, through Nicky’s, in the dreams. Thinks. But doesn’t think to wonder why.

The man that became Eliot Spencer was a soldier.

And he would be ashamed.

* * *

The first new dream he gets in over a hundred years. And all he can see are the man’s eyes. They’re soft and warm and so, so bright. Even as the bullet tears through his heart. Then, only then does he get a wider picture. Of an older woman screaming at his side. Of another young man running away, purse in hand.

And god, he’s so, so young.

* * *

Eliot doesn’t get a chance to breathe.

* * *

The next dream on his way to finding whoever this new one is, is another. A flash of blonde hair. A crooked grin. The snap of a wire sawed through. And the fall.

* * *

He makes it to Sophie’s doorstep. Doesn’t quite remember how.

They try to find them. They do.

But their contacts don’t know them. And they seem to operate so far outside of their world that they have no touchstones.

And then...oh, and then. They watch them meet. They watch them meet in bits and pieces. Watch them together. And they’re not perfect - there’s more dreams, more accidents that leave Eliot gasping awake at night in shared pain and quiet anger - but they figure it out. All on their own.

And Eliot...Eliot makes a choice.

He takes one of Andy’s journals, and adds another page.

It’s an apology and an explanation.

He leaves it where they can find it.

And leaves them be.

Sophie doesn’t agree with him in the slightest - tries to remind him of the fear of waking up alone after the cold and the dark. Tries to remind him that the pain doesn’t go away, and neither does the fear. Tries to remind him that they’re both more alone than they’ve ever been, despite their tethers.

But, he notices, she doesn’t go to them either.

And neither bother to point out that the road they turn down is just a shade bit darker. A shade bit lonelier.

* * *

When Dubenich approaches him, Eliot doesn’t think about it.

He’s gotten good at blocking out the dreams. Gotten good at ignoring Andy’s attempts to make contact too. And Joe and Nicky’s attempts to convince him that he should check in on the two newest. So, he doesn’t think.It’s a simple job - in and out, make sure no one but himself gets hit. All fine and dandy. Until he’s up on that rooftop. Until he sees who he’s working with.

(And why, why, why didn’t he actually check Dubenich’s files? He should’ve demanded it. Normally would have.)

And he knows, the second they lay eyes on him too that it’s over. His chance to run is long gone.

Parker’s...about the same as he imagined. But dreams are a shade too fair to encompass the amount of energy she possesses in her still frame - the amount of pure joy she contains.

Hardison’s taller than he thought. But his eyes are just as bright, and his smile just as wide. And Eliot can’t breathe when that smile gets turned on him.

They get through that job by sheer force of will alone. And even he can’t walk away from Dubenich trying to blow them up. Though he wants to. He really, really wants to. But, one look from Hardison - one look from Parker - and he finds he can’t move a damn inch.

And he wonders - vaguely, in those sleep deprived nights in the coming months, when he lets himself wander that far in - if this was how Andy felt, when she’d found Quynh. That loneliness...it’s not gone. Not by a long shot. But there’s something else there, for the first time in a long time.

And when they show up at Sophie’s theater - when her eyes light up at seeing all of them together (and apparently meeting Nate again, which, they’re going to need to talk about because hello it’s only been five years what the hell Sophie) - he knows she’s thinking the same damn thing.

* * *

The man that is Eliot Spencer is a soldier.

And he’s finally coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> For those curious, Nate is also an immortal. Just a little behind the rest of them. It's fine.


End file.
